Snowflake
by Ravariel
Summary: Montparnasse's world is shaken to the core by Eponine and Gavroche's deaths on the barricade. Features a quote from Dante.


_Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge. –Dante_

Montparnasse had heard the quote from a student much too rich for the café he sat in, a student who had showed off his knowledge of Italian and then debated the pretentious words with his friend. Idiotic, Montparnasse had thought it—virtue and knowledge, indeed. What good are they? Let me once put you under my knife and we'll see how long it takes you to become a brute, squirming and pleading and letting me have my will just for a chance at sparing your miserable life. And you aren't even wearing a tasteful waistcoat. That's where virtue and knowledge will get you…

Yet the quote remained with him over the following months, no matter how many times he mocked it in his head.

On the seventh of June, Montparnasse met Thénardier in the street. Patron-Minette was planning another burglary to make up for their lost haul on the night of the third, and he needed to ask the innkeeper a question.

"Where's Gavroche? We want him for the job and I've not seen the kid these last two, three days."

"Dead."

The word came out brusque and cold. Montparnasse staggered under its weight. "What?"

Thénardier nodded. "Caught a couple bullets hanging around the barricades. What he was doing, can't say—you get no pickings till it's all over, and the way it rains! Little rat got drowned by going in too soon."

"Loves a riot, that one." He couldn't think of what else to say. Gavroche. Dead. The little rascal who was everywhere and respected nothing while somehow managing a love for the world—

Montparnasse shook his head. Not now, he couldn't dwell on it now. Had to find someone for the job. "Well, where's Éponine?"

"Dead."

This time he reeled as under her fiercest kiss, the times when he was so shocked and out of his mind with her presence that he couldn't even feel pleasure until she drew back. Now he knew that overwhelming pain and grief and suffering were on the horizon of his consciousness, but he wasn't aware enough to experience them yet. "How?" he gasped out.

It was not true. It could not be.

"Barricades. Caught in the same rain. They're both still lyin' there, Rue de la Chanvrerie—hey! Where are you…"

For Montparnasse was running.

He arrived at the site of the barricade as a light rain began to fall from the clouded sky. Bodies were everywhere and he saw neither of the ones he sought until he went into the battered café. There he caught sight of Gavroche at once, laid on a table with honor and yet—and yet so dead, nevertheless.

Montparnasse scooped the boy into his arms (when did he become so small, nearly weightless?) and held him close. As he bowed his head his hat fell to the ground, and he did not care enough to pick it up again.

A crushing loneliness was sweeping over him. Gavroche gone, Éponine gone…

_Éponine._ Taking a deep breath, he carried Gavroche from the café and began to search for her.

Her body was off in an alley, he discovered at last. Not honored like Gavroche's. Setting aside the boy's corpse and wiping water from his own face as the rain grew heavier, Montparnasse lifted Éponine's head into his lap. He truly was alone now, he thought. Nowhere to turn, no friendly faces. Éponine had been his home and without her—

With a sob, he bent to kiss her on the forehead.

The next few days were hell. He got through the burglary, but only by pretending that Éponine was at his side, ignoring the dangers of his knife, and that Gavroche was darting here and there. When he separated from the rest of Patron-Minette after unenthusiastically taking his share, he intended to do nothing but wander through the night. However, he stopped short at the sound of a little voice.

"Don't go that way, Claude. That's where the men with knives go."

The second voice sounded younger yet. "But the man M. Gavroche talked to one time had a knife, and he must have been okay if M. Gavroche was talking to him. He stuck his knife in a cane and I think—"

Gavroche. Gavroche's little boys, the ones he had taken to sleep in the elephant. And they remembered him.

_You were not made to live as brutes…_

But he could not yet admit that his brutal lifestyle no longer appealed to him.

This is for you, Gavroche, he thought. _Only_ for you, understand? Not because I want to take in a couple of kids.

"Hey boys," he said, approaching slowly so they wouldn't run away, "remember me? I'm Gavroche's friend."

They rushed to him. "Oh," said the elder, "monsieur! Have you come to look after us?"

Montparnasse did not hesitate. "Yes," he answered. "I have."

They lived on the streets, but Montparnasse knew the best places, and he committed no murders so he would have to answer no questions about traces of blood on his knife, which Claude admired very much. Gradually, even the thieving grew less dangerous, and less to his taste.

And when the first snowflake fell, Montparnasse gave in. He used his most recent haul to get a tidy little flat where the concierge was willing to help the boys with their reading, and went out to get himself a job.


End file.
